Microsoft, as a huge company, is no different than any other company in that they’re going to have more than their fair share of good trends and bad trends. Right now it seems they can’t do much of anything right. Their mobile OS is loved by the few who find it useful and despised (or ignored) by virtually everyone else. Their office suite is still the best but almost no one believes it’s worth what they continue to charge for
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…an informal survey and out of roughly 30+ people I asked, half owned the software because they bought their system and the OS came with it. Of the other half only one person actually owned the software. When I asked the other 15 why they didn’t own it, price was given as the primary reason. I also often heard the refrain “everyone I know has a copy of Windows that I could use so it came down to paying a few hundred dollars or taking t
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…changed in that category. Surely things have gotten better, but when it comes to Logitech, their “hits” have always come with a healthy dose of “miss”. If my memory is in any way intact, it was around 1988 that Logitech got serious about their mice. Prior to that time each of their attempts were pretty much an attempt to interest the volume market. They adopted the Wal-Mart approach to making mice. Somewhere around this t
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I just got back from Microsoft‘s Gamefest show and I come away from it pretty disappointed, at least initially. First, it didn’t help that flying in general has become a fiasco. I got stuck getting out of Philly then delayed into Chicago. Then there was a huge wait to check bags in Chicago and a delay getting out. Finally, I got stuck in Seattle on the way out for 5 hours and that resulted in my getting stranded in Denver. Second, an
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…ude lessons that need to be learned the hard way. Ultimately I believe, in the end, it’ll all work out and we’ll be much better for it. I’ve already seen the benefits of cloud computing in a number of areas: 1. E-mail was made for this. Instead of installing a local app and keeping all your messages on your PC and then, as is often the case, losing them when your PC fails in some way. This happens usually because you didn’
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If I read one more article about how the PC games business is dead or dying as a result of piracy I’m going to lose it. The latest news is from a head guy at THQ who thought it was a good idea to be quoted cursing about it in an article. Enough already. This industry started in the late 70′s and piracy has been an issue from the start. What’s more is that the hardware and software have become more standardized over that time th
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…s a result, it doesn’t mean anything. People often say one thing while reality takes them in another direction. I used to be involved in a lot of focus group management. We had a classic situation where we asked roughly 100 parents what was more important to them, their time or their money. In every case nearly 100 people said money. We would then walk them through their daily lives, ask them very specific questions and then, at the end, ha
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…s 7 can improve upon Vista then it might be the best laptop choice for me. As a gamer I suspect Microsoft will have to work overtime to get me to give up XP on my desktop. Here are my very rough, very short first impressions: 1. The install went smoothly. I installed “clean” on a partition where Vista existed. It essentially renamed “Windows” to “Windows.old” and I believe that if I dual-boot to it that it̵
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I was just reading a piece on Huffington Post about 15 of the stranger interview questions of late from top companies. I’ve had a reputation for being one of those people who does exactly this when I interview people. Most of the positions I’ve hired for demand creativity so I’ve found that the interview needs to be creative as well. You’re not looking for monkeys who know how to memorize responses in these roles. The que
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I don’t mean literally explode (assuming you’ve been reading too much about recent Dell laptop fires and Sony-provided batteries for them). I’m talking about the market suddenly being hit with multicore processors on the scale of 8-core, 12-core and possibly even 20+ cores or more. After attending the Microsoft Gamefest event I started making some calls and a number of them kept giving small little tidbits of information to sug
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